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Brookline during the Spanish Flu pandemic

By adamg on Mon, 06/15/2009 - 6:26pm

Ken Liss describes how the town coped during the Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918-1919 - including the creation of an open-air hospital on Summit Avenue.

Neighborhoods: 
Brookline


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Comments

By Ken Liss on Tue, 06/16/2009 - 11:22am.

It should be noted that “Spanish flu” is a misnomer, even more than “swine flu” is for the current strain. According to the book “Hunting the 1918 Flu” by Kirsty Duncan, news about the flu came out of Spain more readily than from other countries because Spain was neutral in the World War and did not have the press censorship that other European countries had. But the flu did not originate in Spain nor was it more prevalent there than elsewhere.

By SwirlyGrrl on Tue, 06/16/2009 - 12:22pm.

The 1918 outbreak appears to have originated in Kansas much earlier in the year, in an area of large hog farms and a hugely overpopulated military base. From there it went overseas with the soldiers and fermented in a continent where much public health infrastructure had been destroyed, where it had existed at all.

It exploded back into North America almost simultaneously at the Boston Navy Yard (aka Charlestown Navy Yard) and the Baltimore Navy Yard. Fort Devins was nearly totally shut down by mid-September.

By Ken Liss on Mon, 06/22/2009 - 2:52pm.

Kansas is right. Slight correction on the Boston breakout (which was apparently much more virulent than the earlier one in Kansas): it was at Commonwealth Pier, where the Seaport Hotel and World Trade Center is today, not at the Boston/Charlestown Navy Yard. The victims there were merchant marine trainees rather than U.S. Navy personnel.

By Canuck on Mon, 07/20/2009 - 11:37am.

I wholeheartedly agree...I also researched this a bit and found that the only reason the 1918 flu outbreak was named "the Spanish Flu" was because of Spain's neutrality during the war, the lack of any wartime censorship in that country; hence, it was the first country to be able to publicly report the outbreak.

When I toured the US back in 1984 I stopped at Fort Riley, Kansas, and visited the museum on the base. That's where I learned that the flu symptoms for the 1918 flu outbreak were first detected...perhaps as early as late 1917 when US soldiers were being trained for the European theatre. Soldiers simply then carried the virus with them to Plymouth, England, where the outbreak became more pronounced before being spread among the troops at the front. I have also heard the news (on occasion) refer to this flu as "the Kansas flu" when making reference to the 1918-1919 pandemic during H1V1 stories.

Of course, once the virus had fully mutated and became really deadly, that's when these same troops carried the virus back to Boston upon their return to the US after repatriation in 1918.